Michael Arria is on vacation this week, and Phil Weiss is filling in on trendspotting.…
The US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has campaigned for Donald Trump in the Middle East, saying a Joe Biden victory would be bad for Israel and Gulf States, in what appears to be a violation of the law saying federal employees must be nonpartisan. Though it’s hardly the first time Friedman has engaged in such actions.
Want to know why Joe Biden won’t say a critical word about Israel? Haim Saban, who just raised $4.5 million for Biden, repeatedly praised the “Jared [Kushner] plan” for peace in the Middle East today for being “outside the box.” Saban was at White House for the UAE/Israel/Bahrain deal announcement Sept. 15.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s withdrawal last Friday from an October memorial to Yitzhak Rabin is an act of irreverence for an Israeli leader we’ve not seen before at her political level; and the drama has roiled the pro-Israel community. Even the Biden campaign spoke up, an aide saying that AOC’s decision was “problematic” for the Democratic Party.
Emgage USA says that it “seeks to empower Muslim Americans through political literacy and civic engagement.” But former Emgage employee Olivia Cantu says that, “instead of being a vehicle for empowerment and change, it has become a tool to undermine and suffocate American Muslim political power.”
Trump’s Bahrain-Israel pact is a power politics move and has been embraced by Israel lobby groups, Democratic reps, and the NYT, all of which bash Palestinians. But in fact it only advances the one-state struggle for democracy inside Israel and Palestine.
A group of Muslim leaders and organizers say the organization Emgage USA has repeatedly disregarded the legitimate interests of Muslim communities in the United States to the detriment of the constituencies they claim to represent.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says Trump “blindsided” and “endanger”-ed Israel by agreeing to give the UAE F-35s in its deal with Israel. So Biden is running to Trump’s right on Israel to win FL, where older Jewish voters are surely pleased by Trump’s doing whatever Israel has wanted.
The UAE deal with Israel under which it gets F-35s from the US may set off bids from other Arab countries for U.S. favor. “Each one has their own pet project, what they would get for normalizing,” says Nimrod Novik. Morocco wants its occupation of Western Sahara accepted. Sudan wants off the U.S. terror list.
Nadia B. Ahmad writes that Establishment Democrats with the Biden campaign question the efforts of Muslim-American grassroots activists and are failing to mobilize the community.